4 ms·

A similar case happened in Italy, and again, because of corruption that led to bad engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam https://en.wikipedia.or

• dredmorbius 6y ago
  Banqiao, China (~170k mort, almost all to disease and starvation, planning/response was abysmal); Machchu2, India (5k, 1979), Johnstown, US (2.2k, 1889, birthed Red Cross and reformed liability law), Vaijont, Italy (2.5k, 1963 landslide-triggered tsunami overtopped dam). Seven topped 1,000 fatalities, of which one was an act of war. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure) There are literally tens of thousand of dams, if not > 100k, worldwide (over 22k in China alone), with well over a century of major utilisation. Granted 100 or fewer major (2+GWe) installations. There are fewer than 400 nuclear power stations worldwide (3911 by my count from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations#See_also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations...), the bulk in operation for less than 50 years. We've had three major disasters and numerous close calls, all with massive long-term consequences. Building out infrastructure to the scale of present or future (industrialised-world electric provisioning to 8-12 billion inhabitants) would see even at much better safety records* a major accident every few years. And that's only one disadvantage. Notably, once floodwaters recede, even a catastrophic dam failure returns to livable condition rapidly: weeks to years, rather than centuries. And, as noted, it's human, social, business, and organisational factor common to any major high-value asset technical project generally to blame.
  • dredmorbius 6y ago
    s/3911/391/ (This was not a large value of 400.)